‘Billy and Me’ by Terry Teachout to Premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks

Tom Wahl and Nicholas Richberg

as William Inge and Tennessee Williams

Those fortunate enough to be in the West Palm Beach area will have a unique theatre opportunity beginning Dec. 8^th.  Palm Beach Dramaworks is mounting the world premiere of a play by Terry Teachout, Billy and Me, in which he has imagined a tempestuous friendship between two of our most renowned twentieth century playwrights, Tennessee Williams and William (Billy) Inge.  This is a major step in the maturation of PBD under the creative direction of its Producing Artistic Director, William Hayes.  His vision has been to supplement the company’s acclaimed classics by also producing completely original works from the very beginning through numerous rewrites, collaborations, rehearsals and eventually onto the PBD stage, and even beyond, to New York and as a staple of regional theaters throughout the U.S.

Billy and Me is a memory play narrated by Tennessee Williams.  Act I is set in a gay bar in Chicago on New Year’s Eve, 1944, immediately after a pre-Broadway tryout of Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.    Williams is on the ascent in Act I, but Inge is an unhappy theatre critic as well as miserable in his personal life.  Seeing The Glass Menagerie that night has inspired Inge to try his hand at play writing.  Act II takes place almost 15 years later at Inge's Sutton Place apartment, a few hours after the Broadway premiere of his first flop, A Loss of Roses.  Inge has had years of hits, is at the height of his career (and prosperity), while Williams’ decline was already underway.  Inge is having difficulty reconciling himself to his first flop as well as his closeted sexuality.

William Hayes

According to Hayes, who is directing Billy and Me and was the inspiration for the play, “the genesis of the idea was while I was directing Picnic, doing research, and was reminded that Inge met Tennessee Williams in 1944, and I began to imagine the intricacy of their relationship, about which little is really known. They must have influenced one another, I thought. They shared similar backgrounds, both being from small towns, had complicated relationships with their mothers, fathers who were frequently absent as they were salesmen, and both were gay, Williams acknowledging it, but Inge self loathing.”

So Hayes suggested the idea of a play about the two famous playwrights to Terry Teachout who was in town for pre-production meetings for his play Satchmo at the Waldorf, which was playing at the end of the same season as Picnic at PBD.  Teachout was intrigued.  After meeting with Hayes, he flew home when the idea for the structure of the play came to him in an epiphany.  “I even had the 2^nd’ act nailed, so I knew I was on solid ground. I called Bill and said ‘I have it!’ and went back to West Palm to meet with Bill and we both agreed that we saw the project in the same way and knew we would work together well. After making my directing debut at PBD last season, I know very well that it's a great place to work, a gorgeous theatre full of first-class people. I also know that Bill is a superb director.”

Terry Teachout

Then soon after the structure was established, Teachout wrote the play in a three day frenzy.  That was more than a year ago and since then it has been “workshopped” by PBD, undergoing revisions.  As Teachout explained, “workshopping is the modern day replacement for out of town tryouts which used to be the norm.”  These workshops have been tirelessly and inspirationally orchestrated by Hayes.

Teachout fills the threadbare historical record of the two playwrights’ personal relationship guided by his knowledge of the men and their plays.  Thus the play is "a work of fiction freely based on fact."  "It's a play about love, jealousy, and - not to put it too pompously - destiny," said Teachout. "An artist is a person who can't do anything else with his life. Art is his fate: it's that or nothing. But he can't become an artist until he accepts that fate and acknowledges his true nature. That's a big part of what this play is about: the struggle of two great American playwrights to come to terms with who they really were."

I asked him about the difficulties he had in writing the play and he responded “nothing excites an artist more than limitations that must be surmounted and the problem with depicting Inge is how do you warm up to him? How do you make him relatable? But having reviewed more than 1,000 theatrical performances in my career taught me much about how a play works, how you have to make difficult decisions about when action starts and stops.” 

There are three actors in the play.  Two of them have been with the play ever since the first workshop production, Nicholas Richberg who plays Tennessee Williams, and Tom Wahl as William Inge.  Joining those two about half way through the developmental process is veteran PBD actor Cliff Burgess, who plays three roles.

Nicholas Richberg has been involved in several developmental plays, mostly with Zoetic Stage, but he says this experience was “my longest development process, a huge gift to an actor. Terry is the writer, but it allows the actors to contribute and shape it and it’s incredible to see the changes over time.”

Richberg is also an experienced musical performer, appearing in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 1776 last year, and in several Sondheim productions in the past and thinks of both Sondheim and Williams as geniuses in their genres.  He has no preference playing musical or drama as long as he is “interpreting the words /music of the author.”

He sees his biggest challenge in this play is to capture the characteristics of Tennessee Williams – usually well known to the audience because Williams was clearly gay, and granted numerous interviews, some while he was obviously drunk.  Both he and Wahl worked with a dialogue coach to get their speech patterns right and even so,” these are not impersonations” both opined.  But the real challenge goes beyond that Richberg said: “playing a real person, having the audience truly care about him, and what motivated him.”

His favorite line from the play is “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – start with the truth and then make it beautiful.”  And that sort of captures the essence of Teachout’s writing he says, “Making the language beautiful, almost like music, poetic.”

“My one wish as an actor was to play Tom in The Glass Menagerie, and, finally, with Billy and Me, I am in a memory play about Tennessee Williams: it’s as rewarding for an actor as playing Tom.”

Inge is played by Tom Wahl, making his PBD debut. He said “I like the challenge of playing the lesser known (as a public persona) Inge, as I have a free hand in interpreting. I see Inge in a constant struggle, finding himself, starting his career as an actor, turning to teaching, then becoming a critic, and then a playwright, always seeming to being either in the wrong place or in the wrong skin. And when finally he is true to himself, he is disgusted by it.”

Wahl also loved being involved in the workshop experience since the beginning, allowing him to make contributions and growing into his character, the shy, repressed William Inge.  Wahl said “although perhaps better known for his other plays and movies, my favorite is Dark at the Top of the Stairs, his last major play.”  In addition to his extensive acting experience, Wahl is a versatile voiceover artist and voice actor.

Cliff Burgess

Cliff Burgess has appeared in many PBD productions and although he stepped into the developmental process later than the other two actors, he was able to provide some valuable input “through fresh eyes.”  Also as a fledgling playwright himself “the process allowed me to see the director and the playwright in action.”

He plays three characters in the play, the waiter in Act I, the doctor in Act II, and the stage manager in both acts. What he finds fascinating about each is that they are not tangential “as each character has a purpose and each has an impact on Williams and Inge.  I play characters ‘of the more mundane world, and supply some comic relief too.’”

Interestingly, Burgess has played Tom in The Glass Menagerie twice in his career and in Inge’s Bus Stop, so he is intimately familiar with their works, and “I recognize the suffering of each and their humanity.”

Billy and Me “inspired by the friendship between playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge,” is Directed by William Hayes, PBD’s Producing Artistic Director.

The playwright, Terry Teachout, is drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, has had an uncommonly diverse career.  He was a professional jazz bassist for eight years, and has also been a dance and music critic, an editorial writer, and a member of the National Council on the Arts.  He has written the libretti for three operas and is the author of numerous books, including Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.  His play Satchmo at the Waldorf was written after the Armstrong biography.

Scenic Design is by Victor Becker, Lighting Design by Paul Black, and Costume Design by Brian O'Keefe.  Billy and Me will grace the stage at Palm Beach Dramaworks on Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, from December 8 to the 31^st with previews on December 6 and 7.  

UPDATE:  My Review of the play now posted

Picnic – Youth, Dreams, and Disillusion Unfold at Dramaworks

In the context of the placid decade of the 50’s, and its small town mid-western setting, Picnic by William Inge took on the daring theme of sexual repression.  It also encapsulated classic literary themes of the American Dream and disillusionment. Inge was from Kansas and the characters he wrote about were emblazoned in his mind and empathetically translated to drama.

It is a Pulitzer Prize winning play, well worth seeing again, and it demands careful orchestration to bring a modern audience into yesteryear and make this still relevant.  It doesn’t help that burnished in one’s mind is the movie version with the woefully inappropriate, over-aged William Holden playing Hal, the young man who energizes the action (as much as I admire Holden as a screen actor). But Bill Hayes, the play’s director, has indeed avoided the “overly theatrical approach” and stereotypical characters, to create more “realistic and complex characters” with an ideal cast.

Inge prefaces his play with a Shakespearean quotation from Sonnet 94:  The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet. If you read the entire Sonnet, particularly what follows that quotation, it establishes one of the central themes of the play, a person is defined by his/her behavior, and there are a number of choices made by the characters in the play that carry significant consequences.

Picnic takes place in the shared yard – so often the gathering point in neighborhoods of the 1950s when people actually connected with one another-- of Flo Owens and Helen Potts. Upstage there is a fence that opens to an alley and beyond that is a panorama of the town buildings.  The set is very important in this intricately arranged play, and scenic design has always been one of PBD’s many strong points

Act I introduces the characters with only some mild hints of what is about to unfold later. Mrs. Potts, the elder stateswoman of the neighborhood, has given some work to a stranger in town, Hal Carter, a young down on his luck drifter, in exchange for something to eat.  He has jumped a freight train to this small Kansas town to see his former college fraternity brother, who he considers his last friend in the world, Alan Seymour, hoping to find a job through Alan’s wealthy father.  Hal had flunked out of college (where he was a star athlete) and had tried unsuccessfully to make his way in Hollywood.  Hal, his shirtless body on display for most of the first act, becomes a lightning rod for some of the lonely women in the play. At first he is only casually noticed by Madge Owens the high school homecoming queen who her mother, Flo, has been plotting for her to marry Alan for the secure life of a country club belle. 

Hal and Madge

Hal is played by Merlin Huff, in his PBD debut, parading his manly presence around the stage like a badge, stomping and posturing, yet inwardly feeling totally insecure. It is a difficult role as Inge provides for little nuance and character development. He is a free spirit, who is yearning to become a “success” which nothing in his dysfunctional background has prepared him to achieve.

His friend, Alan, is convincingly played by Taylor Miller, also making his PBD debut, with his wholesomeness, and innate confidence from having grown up in the “right” family and following their expectations, only conscious of Madge’s desirability as a beauty. He looks up to Hal as a rebel and admires his animal attraction to the women he encounters.

The key role of Flo, who is trying to orchestrate the lives of her two daughters, hoping that they will marry well, is outstandingly played by PBD veteran Patti Gardner, capturing her anxiety that her daughters should not have disappointing lives as she’s had.  Flo’s husband had walked out on her after the birth of their second child so she is very wary of a man such as Hal. She is a strong mother lion guarding her cubs.

Alas, for Madge, she feels her beauty may be a detriment, as revealed in an exchange between Madge and her mother in the first act:

Alan and Madge

MADGE.  What good is it to be pretty?

FLO.  Well…pretty things…like flowers and sunsets and rubies… and pretty girls, too….they’re like billboards telling us that life is good.

MADGE. But where do I come in?

FLO. What do you mean?

MADGE. Maybe I get tired being looked at.

FLO. Madge! Don’t talk so selfish!

MADGE.  I don’t care if I am selfish.  It’s no good just to be pretty.  It’s no good!

Madge is played by the appropriately beautiful Kelly Gibson, who portrays the essence of a young woman tottering on the brink of full blown womanhood and what the future holds for her, trying to understand who she is other than what the mirror and people tell her she is.  There are constant references to that power she holds over men, but in a sense she remains pure (a “summer flower” not tarnished by “base infection” as Shakespeare puts it), trying to break out to find something more relevant than her looks alone.  As she says so poignantly in the second act to her mother,

MADGE. It just seems that when I’m looking in the mirror that’s the only way I can prove to myself I’m alive.

FLO.  Alive?

MADGE. Yes.  Lots of the time I wonder if I really exist.

Flo’s boarder, Rosemary Sydney, is a school teacher, who hangs out with two other unmarried teachers, and has a long-time beau, Howard Bevans.  The story of Rosemary’s and Howard’s relationship is juxtaposed to the one which emerges between Hal and Madge, two middle aged people, who have let their years slip by vs. the story of youth and their expectations of the future.  

Margery Lowe’s performance as Rosemary is terrific. She is a woman who has had failed romances in the past and knows she is on the precipice of spinsterhood, especially after seeing the young people she is surrounded by, a desperation Lowe practically breathes from every pore.  (And Lowe “cuts a mean rug” even after Rosemary becomes intoxicated.)  

Another PBD familiar face, Michael McKeever, undertakes the role of the ambivalent Howard with an engaging homey affability.  Fear of commitment shadows Howard who seems set in his ways.

Those are the basic ingredients for Inge’s brew that boils over in Act II as the town’s annual Labor Day picnic is about to take place.  Madge’s slightly younger, brainy, tom-boyish sister Millie has no date and Mrs. Potts (to Flo’s horror) suggests that Hal becomes Millie’s escort.  Millie suddenly becomes obsessed with her looks as well (deeply jealous of the attention her sister commands) although throughout most of the play she remains true to her intellectual stand-offish self.  In a sense she represents Inge’s presence in the play. (She is reading Carson McCullers The Ballad of the Sad Café, which in some ways parallels the play.) Maren Searle, makes her PBD debut as a Millie and is on stage most of the time, maturing right before our eyes, and while she fights with her older sister, she deeply loves her as well. Searle brings an acting maturity to her role of a sixteen-year old.

Meanwhile, poor Hal, as much as he tries to “fit in” with everyone, he just seems to say the wrong thing and becomes self conscious about everything he’s about to say.  In a sense, he’s an innocent, another “summer flower.”It doesn’t help that his friend Alan has indeed offered him a job, but as the lowest manual laborer which Alan does not let Hal forget.  Still Hal wears his optimism, tempered by humiliation, on his shirtless sleeve.

Hal has Mrs. Potts,  – so amiably and skillfully played by the seasoned PBD actress Elizabeth Dimon -- in stitches telling stories about his father – who he obviously loved in spite of his  alcoholism and jail time.  Mrs. Potts, her mother’s caretaker who we only hear offstage, sees the inherent goodness in Hal and accepts his youthful, manly countenance without the criticism or jealousy of the other mature women.  Perhaps that is because of her own impetuous love affair when she was very young resulted in a marriage that her own mother had annulled only 24 hours later. She understands the urges of youth and acts as an observer, and a reconciler of some of the ensuing conflict.

Howard produces a bottle of liquor to share before the picnic, the truth serum which particularly Rosemary has more than a swig of, erupting in a vicious attack of Hal, and everything he represents – youth and freedom. – culminating in her direct accusation:

ROSEMARY. ….You’re just a piece of Arkansas white trash!  And braggin about your father!  And I’ll bet he wasn’t any better’n you are!  I’ll bet you lose that job before your two weeks is up….You think just ‘cause you’re young you can push the old folks aside.  You’ll end your life in the gutter and it’ll serve you right ‘cause the gutter’s where you belong.

 Howard puts a stop to the tirade.

Hal and Madge finally make an electrically charged connection at the end of the second act and cannot take their hands off each other, kissing passionately all over the yard, on the porch, in front of the shed.  However, they now have to face the headwinds of Flo’s disapproval, not to mention Alan who becomes insanely jealous and feels utterly betrayed by both. 

Act III takes place the morning after the picnic.  Everything has changed.  Madge and Hal returned late in Alan’s car.  Alan has the police now looking for Hal on the trumped up charge that his car was stolen.  Flo is outraged. 

Rosemary has seen her future and does not like the vision of old lady spinster she knows she will become; she has begged Howard to marry her and before Howard knows what has happened he has been railroaded into a future he never thought would become real, although, deep down, he does love Rosemary.  

Hal plans to flee on the freight train that can be heard in the distance, urging Madge to come with him, telling her where to look for him in Tulsa.  He sees in Madge “the only real thing I ever had,” and he imagines a life with her, settling down, perhaps buying a farm, a future.  Their relationship is different than the others, based on strong sexual desire and the unbounded optimism of youth. Hal is no longer the drifter.

In spite of Flo’s disappointment and objections, Madge follows on the next bus.  Flo’s neighbor, Helen Potts, has to restrain Flo who still can’t believe that her beautiful daughter could be throwing away her life, but Madge has opted for HER life, as Rosemary did.

That freight train whistle is a constant leitmotiv in the play, a reminder of a vast nation with sprawling opportunities, at the heart of the American Dream.  Hal arrives and departs via that beckoning train. From Inge’s description of the setting before the beginning of the play:  Far off, the whistle of a train is heard coming to town. It is a happy promising sound.

And near the beginning of the play, these exchanges between the Owens women foreshadow much of the play:

MADGE: Whenever I hear that train coming into town, I always get a feeling of excitement….in here. (Hugging her stomach)

MILLIE: Whenever I hear it, I tell myself someday I’m going to get on that train and I’m going to go to New York.

FLO: That Train only goes as far as Tulsa.

MILLIE: Well, in Tulsa I could catch another train.

MADGE: I always wonder, maybe some wonderful person is getting off here, just by accident, and he’ll come into the dime store for something and see me behind the counter…

Interesting that Dramaworks’ season opens with this classic play, as it did last year with Our Town, a play with which it shares many characteristics, simple but direct fundamental themes unfolding in a small-town setting, superbly staged and acted.  Clearly this where Dramaworks excels, in the details of the staging.

It is a complicated production, even requiring a choreographer, Michelle Petrucci, for the sexy and disturbing dance number on the crowded stage in Act II.

Set Under Construction

 There can never be enough praise for scenic design by Michael Amico, and the set for Picnic is spot on, exactly as Inge required, and even for PBD’s relatively new home and larger stage, must have been a challenge for Mr. Amico.  Challenge accepted and achieved!

Finished Picnic Set

Costume design is by Brian O'Keefe who did not want to use stock dresses, hand crafting more than a dozen for the show, with Madge’s blue dress requiring 60 hours of work!

More about the devil is in the detail: the lighting design by Donald Edmund Thomas, something the audience might take for granted, was carefully planned to be in sync with the costumes and as the play takes place within 24 hours, the morning sunrise light begins on stage left, moves overhead during the day, and “sets” stage right. There are a number of “wake up” changes of light and there are some eighty lighting cues in the production.

The music (all original scores) and sound design are by Steve Brush, perfectly setting the tone and mood of the production.  I loved the opening which indeed captured the morning of a late summer day, the sun coming up; the whistle of a train in the distance, a barking dog, and then the play unfolds. At night the sound of crickets fill the theatre.

Although in minor roles, special mention should be made of Julie Rowe and Natalia Coego who play Rosemary’s unmarried schoolteacher  friends, a kind of Greek chorus, one younger than Rosemary who teaches, what else, feminine hygiene (sounds very 50s to me) and the other, an older woman who reminds Rosemary what she might easily become. And kudos to young Riley Anthony who plays Bomber, the newspaper boy who unmercifully teases Millie, and naturally is gaga over Madge (although even his opinion of Madge changes at the end).

This is a huge undertaking for a regional theatre, flawlessly directed by Bill Hayes who obviously has a great rapport with his actors and behind-the scenes technicians – a promising start to Dramaworks’ new season.  

Leading Cast Members